It was another long week at the legislature, with final committee hearings wrapping up in the House. By the end of those exhausting 12-hour days, I think everyone at the Capitol felt a huge sigh of relief.
I am excited to say that four policies I have been working on made it out of committees unanimously. Three of these policies are solutions to problems we identified in the health care space that have lead to massive abuse of patient care and medical insurance fraud. The fourth bill I was proud to work on alongside a constituent in the property lien space. I was not alone in successes this week as twenty three other Democrat bills made it out of committees. It is refreshing that this session has brought an uptick in the bipartisan alignment on a number of ideas ranging from education, finance, healthcare, disability access, and more.
(And for those keeping score at home, I held my bill that would allow tenants to decide to have their rent reported for credit purposes. I wanted to make sure that the correct tenant protections were in place before moving forward. The commerce Chair has agreed to hear it in a future committee as a topic of discussion.)
Natural Resources, Energy, and Water Committee was...interesting. The week wrapped up with testimony on chem trails, climate change denialism, and the ability to request a new utility provider if yours has DEI policies that hurt your feelings. As my colleague Rep. Mathis stated, we have officially seen it all in that committee.
Ag to Urban water legislation returned with HB 2298. This proposal seeks to incentivize reductions in groundwater pumping by encouraging farmers in some Active Management Area to convert their groundwater rights into credits that can be used to establish an assured water supply to build new homes. While the concept is promising, key details in this bill like the portability and volume of the credits fail to guarantee water savings. It was vetoed last year by the Governor and passed out of committee on party lines this week. I am working deeper on this policy to find a way to balance the best outcome to transition away from high water uses while ensuring we maintain sustainable allocations of this critical resource.
Science and Technology hosted a robust discussion on the urgency to address our state’s cybersecurity need. HB 2736 establishes a five-year pilot program to bolster Arizona’s cybersecurity by upgrading critical state IT systems. This is aimed to modernize the state’s cybersecurity infrastructure and protect its sensitive data from emerging cyber threats. In explaining my vote in support of the bill, I made comments to the fact that our nation and our state are facing the biggest security risks we have ever faced - in human form of hostile citizens overtaking databases and payment systems that they have no idea how to manage, putting everyone’s private information at risk.
On the constituent front, more alarming news to share as mass layoffs in the VA healthcare space leave gaping holes in care for veterans. A concentration of these layoffs were in the radiology space, a group of physicians that read upwards of 30,000 scans a week for veterans.
I was also alerted that a key grant to fund a public school program in my district, and two others, was arbitrarily canceled four days ago by the desperate-oligarchs-gutting-everything group. This $16M three-year grant was allocated to three Arizona public schools to help grow and retain teachers and school leaders serving high-need student populations. “Our best teachers will feel a drop in pay, and we will be losing our good educators for our kids because Trump canceled this grant that we already received, contracted for, and have been relying on,” states Osborn School District Governing Board Member Ed Hermes.
Robbing our children of quality education and leaving veterans to face unacceptable delays in care will ultimately come at a greater cost to society. If you are experiencing a hardship from the cutting and gutting happening at the federal level please email me. We are collecting stories so that we can amplify and advocate to fight back against this hostile takeover.
With kindness,
Sarah
